"I like watching leherin fine but two angles of it is pushing it."

"That makes sense. Is it terribly impolite to bring a book for the second angle, or just leave earlier?"

"You can sneak out at intermission, I guess, but it's too dark to read."

"I could probably develop a see-in-the-dark spell. Or enchant a book to be readable in the dark without emitting light."

"That'd make the leherin the winner then."

"There's still the problem of mana, I'll develop it and figure out how much it costs and let you know if it's feasible."

"So I shouldn't buy tickets yet?"

"Not quite yet."

"Okay. Does developing the spell, the first steps, involve doing magic or just thinking about it?"

"Just thinking about it—actually writing it is better, so I can review it and make sure it's good and descriptive and efficient."

"And then you have notes for future reference."

"Yeah. I have some spells memorised—like invisibility and flight and telepathy—but I also keep them written down and have a list. Some I based on books, but I always add more details because I can afford to."

"And most people can't?"

"Hmm, most people don't? More details to the spell means more details to keep track of, means they need to spend longer concentrating on it and if they slip up they're stuck with the incomplete or incorrect spell forever, plus it's harder to make sure the mana allocation is efficient. I don't need that, I can watch my work as I go and make changes on the fly and hold the spell half-formed in my mind if I need a break."

"Useful, the other way sounds nervewracking - can they draft at all -"

"They can write it all down and be as detailed as they want on paper, you don't need to hold the whole spell in your mind, you can even read it as you set it—but if you stop reading it, if you think about something else or pay attention to something else and don't have a metamancer handy then that's it."

"Damn. You'd think they'd have incentives to keep you around."

"The War devastated most of the continent, it's a natural taboo to evolve, I feel."

"People have wars all the time and don't inevitably pick broad classes of scapegoat."

"It was several countries against one guy, though. If you believe the books."

"That makes it stupider! If it was several people who were all metamancers maybe they could be forgiven for generalizing."

"There were also stories about metamancers before and after that trying to do the same thing, it's just that that one's the most famous. And religious taboo, which can conceivably have preceded that war."

"Religions," mutters Kaylo.

"Given that I'd only seen the one I didn't feel it was fair to generalise. But yes."

"They're often like that."